[RiderOfGiraffes]

One of the most important lessons about writing that I ever learned was to make sure people could read what you wrote.

Here is a screenshot of my browser window opened onto the article in question.

http://www.penzba.co.uk/StevenPressfield.jpg

It will be ironic if this is one of those occasions that my ISP fails to serve the page, but if you get a "forbidden" or similar, hit "Reload".

So, for those of you who run web sites - what does your site look like in an older browser, and should you care?

FWIW I could read the article if I selected all text (Ctrl-A).

[jacquesm]

It works fine for me and is actually quite good.

Just to be sure I checked it in konqueror too (4.2.2) and it works there too.

[RiderOfGiraffes]

I can read it fine when I highlight the text. And the article is quite good - yes. I've up-mud it.

My point remains.

I'm actually technically fairly competent compared with most of my customers. If either of my companies served a web page like that, half my customers wouldn't be able to read it. Is that my problem?? Or theirs?

It's my problem. If you have a web page, you need to decide where the cut-off is. The author here either doesn't know that his page doesn't render correctly, or doesn't care. Either way, if I were a customer, I'd be less than impressed.

So the question remains: Can your customers read your web page(s)?

(In your specific case, jacquesm, I know the answer is "yes")

[unalone]

Give it another try. Sometimes loading a page doesn't work and refreshing fixes it.

Also: With all respect, supporting Konqueror is really stretching support. It's got practically no market share, and isn't even the most popular Linux browser. I'm surprised it isn't working, though: I thought it ran WebKit, and so wouldn't mess up.

[RiderOfGiraffes]

Loaded three times, same result each time.

I agree that it's infeasible to support all browsers, and mine, in particular, is almost certainly not worth supporting. In most other circumstances I wouldn't bother to say anything, but here I thought the observation was worth making.

Not everyone sees your web site the way you do. How do you check/test?

[jacquesm]

We have lots of browsers on hand in virtual machines, every major change gets tested in everything we can lay our hands on, we also ask our users to report problems through the help desk, and we work with them to get rid of bugs.

As for having every browser work with your site, sorry but that isn't always possible. There are finite resources for everything, and if you insist on using an out-of-the-ordinary setup with a miniscule portion of the users then you must surely agree that the minor discomforts of that are of your own choosing. Just like, for instance I will not support IE3, IE4 or Netscape 1.2 (and a whole host of other browsers that have met their end-of-life long ago) any more.

I've been a long time user of Konqueror myself, but right now I wouldn't know of any real good reason to continue to use it, Mozilla/FF/Iceweasel or whatever it wants to be called is available just about everywhere for the price of a free download.

Even Opera has a huge following compared to Konqueror, which is now below 0.08%, in spite of being the 'default' browser on a whole bunch of linux distros.

Chances are you're one of very few people that has ever tried to load that page using Konqueror, and chances are that the problem lies in (your old version of) Konqueror, especially since a newer one displays the page correctly.

[RiderOfGiraffes]

Let me say from the beginning that I agree that I have a very old version of Konqueror. So old that there are many, many sites that I can't browse. I accept that. I'm not actually complaining that I can't read the text without doing something "special" - namely, highlighting the text.

However, I am quite frankly amazed that I'm being down-mud for pointing out that this is a serious issue. You, jacquesm, are describing extraordinary lengths to ensure that your visitors can read your site. I am pretty sure that the vast majority of people don't go to the lengths you do. And probably they shouldn't.

Perhaps I just didn't make myself clear.

But the point I'm trying to make is that people who care about customers need to make this decision, and need to know they're making it.

Is it not important? Is it not relevant? Is it not an issue for web designers to test across multiple browsers? Do you not care that there are people excluded? Are you not considering this? Have you consciously made the decision as to which browsers you won't support?

Are these questions not appropriate?

Clearly there are people who feel that these are not appropriate questions.

Or maybe I'm being down-mud because they are relevant, people aren't considering them, and I've pricked a conscience or two.

Down-mod me if you choose, but ask yourself why. Better yet, explain why. If people agree with you, you'll get lots of karma. I don't much care about karma, as evidenced by the fact that I've replied again, risking yet more karma in an attempt to make a point that I think is important.

So I've had my say.

As for why I use such an old version of Konqueror, it's a long story. Suffice to say I regularly access HN from hardware so old that I've struggled to run anything more modern than SuSE 8. The system is so fragile that I don't dare try to upgrade anything, because it's likely everything will break, and I really haven't the time to fix it.

[pbhjpbhj]

Konqueror runs everywhere now doesn't it. Is this Konq 4.2 on KDE3? or Konq on Windows? Also from the screen shot it looks like it's still loading, the frills round the K are uneven??

Fine for me in 4.3.1 on KDE4 on Kubuntu 9.04.

Trying on browsershots ...

[Edit] nothing especially shows in the major browsers indeed looks pretty good in most things; I would say it looks like gzip is not on and YSlow gives the site a grade D. Some large images which could take an age on dialup.

[marcofloriano]

What´s your browser ? Looks like Netscape ...

[jamesbritt]

It says "Konqueror" in the title area.